Jeff Bezos says he and Elon Musk are 'very like-minded' despite not knowing each other

• Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have been feuding for years.
• But in a recent interview, Bezos admitted that the two tech moguls aren't so different.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk haven't always seen eye to eye.

But in an interview with Lex Fridman, Bezos said he and Musk are "very like-minded."

It's true: Both billionaires agree that establishing human colonies beyond Earth is the ticket to saving humanity from mass extinction.

They've both founded private space companies and invested hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in those companies to help achieve their visions.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and Musk founded SpaceX in 2002.

Where the men differ is the best location for off-world settlement — Bezos envisions a trillion people living on space colonies whereas Musk has his sights set on settling Mars.

"I'm not saying we're identical," Bezos told Fridman in December. "But I think we're very like-minded."

The Bezos-Musk Feud

Despite their similarities, Bezos and Musk are far from friends. They've been feuding over NASA contracts and flinging insults for nearly 20 years.

In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Musk said of Bezos: "The rate of progress is too slow and the amount of years he has left is not enough, but I'm still glad he's doing what he's doing with Blue Origin."

A year prior, Bezos had criticized Musk's choice to move to Mars, saying in a presentation: "My friends who want to move to Mars? I say do me a favor: Go live on the top of Mount Everest for a year first and see if you like it, because it's a garden paradise compared to Mars."

Yet the two tech moguls who have the vision, resources, and leadership to potentially save humanity from extinction, don't even know each other.

"I don't really know Elon very well," Bezos told Fridman. "I know his public persona, but I also know you can't know anyone by their public persona. It's impossible."

But Fridman was optimistic in the interview, saying, "Yeah, I hope you guys hang out sometimes, shake hands, and sort of have a kind of friendship that would inspire just the entirety of humanity because what you're doing is one of the big grand challenges ahead for humanity."

Bezos said he agreed with Fridman and concluded, "I love that idea."